The Good, The Bad and The Emo

Many, many years ago a great creator known as Yahoo bought a gaping black hole known as Geocites. This cancerous tumor on the metaphorical brain of the internet allowed almost any user to maintain their own website. This meant you, your sister, your cat, anything with internet connection and a keyboard could create their own web-page. The results were catastrophic.

Luckily for the champions of the internet in 2009 Geocites was permanently taken off the internet. For the days following the incident the average IQ of internet users jumped a staggering 25% . 

In honor of Geocites' destruction I present to you five awful websites that would put geocites to shame:

http://www.myotaku.com/users/scarredswordheart : I'm sure that this emo kid has a terrible life that they're just dying to whine about. Unfortunately their interesting taste in text and wall paper makes this website virtually unreadable. 

http://www.myotaku.com/users/worst_nightmare : Yet another emo kid but this one was at least kind enough to give us their name. Under the “real name” section the website proudly reads: "u are a fuckin ass hole". Apparently the word “asshole” is now “ass hole” which is apparently a name. Who knew? Also the site brilliantly proclaims this using lime green against a white background. For all of it's simplicity this site actually takes a hideously long time to load. Which gives the viewer plenty of time to consider navigating away.

http://www.1112.net/lastpage.html : I hope the person who made this site was joking . . . It's cold outside! Also the award for the least amount of creativity goes to this guy! This page is literally blank, with a few sentences centered in the middle. I guess I should be glad they are centered.

http://www.sixtiespress.co.uk/ : This UK website makes me think of a bill, an overdue bill by a very angry company. The letters bolded in white with black highlights form a rainbow of colorful text that is about as ascetically pleasing as it is readable. I know the sixties was a time of experimentation but I think the person who made this site had too much LSD.

http://www.valweb.org/ : This color cyan is atrocious all on it's own. It's not teal. It's not light blue. No, it is cyan like the color your printer prints when it's out of ink. What's borderline pathetic is that this site is some type of art exchange. The two alien characters on the black banner are supposed to be art apparently.

Actual good websites are hard to find in a world where Web 2.0 dictates comments from random internet denizens have as much right to be posted as actual content but here are five websites I think are actually worth your time.

http://tosh.comedycentral.com/blog/ : No matter how bad my life is this man always gets me to laugh. His website is as funny as it is cool and interactive. Every week they do hilarious “caption this” contests and everyday they post funny/creepy pictures. The site has a pretty easy navigation four main categories line the top banner and the small banner above that connects the user back to comedy central. I liked this design because it was very interactive and it helped draw in a great audience which the Tosh.0 brand now gets to advertise products to. I also like that it's a dark background.

http://www.livejournal.com/ : I always liked the way live journal was set up. They never bothered you if a post was increditably long. In fact you can pretty much write a novel in post form. You can make groups and communities pretty easily too. I think this would be a good way to post an online portfolio too.

http://www.cnn.com/ : I always felt this website had a good mix of adds and content. The adds are usually the things on the farthest to either side. The content and navigation is in the center which makes the website look very direct and current.

http://vimeo.com/ : As far as video formatting and flash graphic goes I liked Vimeo the moment we did that project on it. The little sun in the corner that dances ever so subtly, the crisp modern colors and a sleek smooth design are all graphics I would like in my personal website, just a little darker.

http://www.redirectdigital.com.br/ : I openly admit there is no way my site could ever be as awesome as this site. Rather than simple scrolling down to see a box this website incorporates some really cool abstract line art into the design of its website layout. Literally the entire page looks like something that strolled out of the Albright Knox art gallery, on a skateboard, wearing an awesome t-shirt.